1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus or system for forming an image on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various types of recording apparatuses are known including copying machines utilizing electrophotography or inkjet recording apparatuses. However, in order to reproduce the image of the same original or same source on a plurality of recording paper sheets (especially in different modes), the same recording procedure must be performed a corresponding number of times. This means that reproduction of hard copies of a desired number requires time which is the product of the time required for a single recording operation and the desired number of hard copies.
With a conventional recording apparatus, in order to produce a plurality of copies from a plurality of originals or from a plurality of pieces of data, the recording operation must be performed a plurality of times for each original. Therefore, an external sorter is required to sort the recording paper sheets with images formed thereon according to the proper order.
When the printing apparatus has a plurality of recording sections or recording heads, the frequency that the individual recording sections or heads are used may differ from one another, resulting in fatigue at a predetermined recording section. Clogging of ink is caused at recording sections which are used less frequently.
The conventional printing apparatus has one output section for the copy. Therefore, if the printed paper sheet is left unremoved, this results in inconvenience of another operator.
If recording in black is performed at 16 dot/mm density in the fine mode with a printing apparatus for printing black and polychromatic images, the recording in other colors than black is performed in the fine mode as well. However, the use of colors other than black such as red is limited; for example, red is used mainly for underlying or marking portions of black originals. Therefore, a high resolution is not so much required for recording in other colors than black. For this reason, recording in colors other than black at a density same as that for recording in black results in high manufacturing cost of the overall apparatus and is very uneconomical.